Ring Around the Whomping Willow
by Moony73
Summary: Sirius has a week to fix everything, a week before Snape tells anyone what he saw, and only seven days before Remus is gone for good. A week of begging won't help, of bad dreams and angered writing. And he knows this time that ‘sorry’ won't fix anything.


_I'm Sorry_

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**A/N: I'm not sure if I should even continue this or leave it a one-shot…**

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"I—I'm sorry, don't you get that? If someone says it, then they're sorry! Will you just listen to me this once! I'm not joking."

"Of course you aren't, Sirius," Remus muttered flatly, "If someone says they're sorry, then they've only done something that can be fixed. What you've done is _ruined_ my life." His cold stare wasn't warmed by the fire. James sat with his arms crossed on the couch, his back turned to Sirius. Peter sat at one of the tables, looking up from the piece of parchment that he wasn't working on. Even Peter had been angry.

Sirius could only blink at the flat, static tone of Remus' voice. He gazed down at the floor several times, but he couldn't believe what he had heard. "We're… we're still friends, right—"

"You know, Sirius, I don't even know about _that_ anymore." It was in a huff that Remus turned to the dormitory stairs, a lazy wave cast down at all of them that meant, "go fuck off". Remus just didn't know how to politely put it in words…

"Remus!" Tears stung his eyes. No, dammit. His family didn't even have to power to make him cry. "_Remus_!" he roared.

"Leave me alone." His voice was soft, he stood just at the top of the stairs, the stained windows spinning webs of spidery light on his figure. He glanced one time at Sirius, who stood there silently waiting for forgiveness at the bottom of the steps. As he turned away from the nightmare of the Common room into the safety of the silent dormitory, he knew he would never forget the sight of tears in Sirius' eyes.

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_Dammit,_

_Not again. I've fucked __my__ life up. And my mom didn't even do __anything__! I can't believe that load of bollocks! I was sitting in the library on Thursday, no, I wasn't doing my homework either. Remus helps…__helped__ me with homework all the time so I don't need to go to the library unless I'm really angry or trying to think. I was thinking, alright! Snivellus, that greasy haired git, Snape walked in. All I could do was laugh at the idiot. A book fell from the mountain he was carrying in his arms. _

_But that's not the point. When he sat down at the table he looked outside, and then up at me and sneered. I could have gotten up and punched that bastard square in his nose. I have a mean right-hook, dammit. But I didn't do it. I know, I know, scary, eh, but I had __different__ plans. The asshole had been sneaking around the seventh floor every week on the full moon, to politely take note that Remus wasn't around whenever we would… __did__ leave after curfew. I was there just to politely put it to his __ass__ in the foremost Grim manner that he had no reason to be there. He never even knew it was __me._

_I should've have punched him, Merlin I should have! I'd rather have a month's worth of detentions than this… I betrayed my best friend. But instead of beating the snot out of the greasy beak of his, I scribbled on some parchment, saying_

_Go To The Whomping Willow at Midnight_

_It was only nine when I sent it around the bookcases to the table he was sitting at. Remus was gone already. Or in the Hospital Wing. I like to imagine that that little paper plane poked his eye out but it didn't even get anywhere close. He burned it… He __burned__ the damn thing and walked over to me and asked me, "What the hell I thought I was doing?!" _

_I just leaned back in my chair and laughed at him. I never want to see old Snivelly blush again! The horror! _

_But anyway… I told him to go copulate with some poor, dying animal. He looked like someone had just thrown up all over his breakfast plate! I still can't stop myself from laughing. Back to the point, he asked me, "What, in __all __the __world__, I wanted to say." He should have been in the least flattered instead of __trying__ to spit in my face! I told him to "Go to the Whomping Willow at midnight" just like in the poor, burned paper plane. _

_He asked why, and I said, poke the knot with a stick, or something close to that. He just turned and shuffled away like the little coward he is. I went back to the dorm and tipped James off about it… And he got angry. He was looking out the window, Madame Pomfrey was helping Remus into the Willow. It was eleven thirty… Wow, I had been in the library that long? Anyways… I've __got__ to stop saying that. Or __writing__ it. Or WHATEVER! _

_He pushed me out of the way and ran out of the common room, cursing at me and telling Wormtail to "hurry the hell up". If I hadn't been so surprised at what I had actually done… I would have been laughing by now… maybe if I was someone else… no, it's not funny at all actually. This is not smashing at __all__! …I think that's a Muggle term I got from Lily… Smashing__…__Don't__ ask. _

_All I have to say is that my actions apparently affect my friendships…_

_Today sucked big cold hard ones… Like James. Or Peter whichever… I don't know. I'm horrible! I __hate__ this! He won't __talk__ to me. I don't know __what__ the hell to do. __One__ sentence, or even a __word__ and he's through some door just to get away from the sound of my __voice__. I don't think I'll be able to suffer through a class sitting next to him. I'll __kill__ Snivelly if it's the last thing I do. I mean, I know it's not __his__ fault that this happened. It's… __mine__. But… ugh! _

_Today sucked. That's it. _

_S. Black_

_P. S. Wow, I didn__'__t know I could write that much. Damn, today sucked.  
_

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It had been several hours later when everyone had been snoring over an hour that he had written every single last thought out onto the pages, some he didn't even mean to. He sat with his wand hovering over the leather-bound black diary… _It's a journal_…_A journal for what? Why do I even have this damned thing anyway?_ He wondered silently as he stared at the outline of his bed where the tendrils of dark began crawling in. It was probably three in the morning by now but he didn't care. He glanced down at the bright white of the pages. They _still _stung his tired eyes even after browsing through them for three hours. He was amazed at the things he had written down, crossed out and underlined. A few words every now and then were capitalized in anger or happiness, whichever he remembered feeling at the time. He reread an entry from a year ago.

_Ah damn_,

_That trick was so GREAT! I can't believe Moony gave James the ink for it! And then __participated__… he can be so fun sometimes. He was the one laughing the hardest when Snivelly jumped out of his wits! But he was a little disappointed that the ink got on that book. Ha, that's Remus for you. Damn, today was so great. He dragged me along to the library but I guess throwing a coin on the other side of the bookcase and making in land on someone's head isn't too bad. Or pulling a book out of its place, putting stink pellets under it and putting it back so someone would take it out is hilarious. Sometimes it's amazing what stuff Moony can come up with, especially last second. I actually got a piece of chocolate from him today, ha! It took a lot of begging of course, but__…_

_I don't think chocolate is good for a dog… Ah damn!_

He had signed, _Sirius (The chocolate-eating Padfoot)_

It was a happy one, and he hadn't come across many of those throughout the whole book, journal thing… whatever it was. He didn't know what it was. _Mum probably gave it to me to write dark notes in or something_… That was when she was trying really hard to get him to show some sort of evil sign. _Crazy, black-hearted hag,_ he thought silently.

Sirius turned to a blank page and without thinking about it he wrote with his wand, _Wow, something from mum I actually use_…

With those words he remembered it was his eleventh birthday when Regulus tossed the book at his head for gaining _any_ kind of attention from their mother. She had clapped when it hit him square in the back of the head, but even in anger Sirius had still kept the damn thing. He learned a sticking charm a year later to keep it closed and only _his_wand would open it—that was when he had found it under his bed, when he had started keeping it on his bedside table. He had been writing in it since he was thirteen.

After he resurfaced from his sleepy daze he looked down at the page to find Moony burned close to the bottom of the page thanks to his wand and wandering thoughts.

And he couldn't stop himself from saying, "Ah, _damn_!" as he swished his wand and leaned against the pillow to think. At some point he was sure he drifted to…

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"No!"

Sirius writhed against the sweat-soaked sheets. They were tight around his chest, his breathing fierce through the darkness. Someone was standing over him; his curtains had been yanked back—hard… maybe that had been the sound of the blade ripping against the coarse fur. No.

No.

No, he was there—he was standing near him in the darkness, waiting at the precipice of silence… waiting for Sirius to push him off as he spoke. But he didn't say anything at all. Sirius just leaned forward and embraced the werewolf. He let his face rest against the soft, white warmth of Remus' shirt. "You're not dead," he muttered as he leaned back. He almost managed to blush in the darkness. The moonlight through the intricate panes of the windows littered the floor, but he _knew_ Remus couldn't see it. He still felt self-conscious…

"Are…" he faltered. Sirius' brow raised considerably, his face fell into curiosity, almost imploring to know what Remus wanted to say. He looked like a homeless puppy, at least, that was as far as Remus had meandered to call his expression, "Are you all right?" His voice was quiet through the beams of moonlight. It seemed almost as if he cringed away from it, as if it was a constant reminder that he was always shunned. Sirius didn't shun him…

In fact, he smiled a little at the werewolf's concern. "I lean a little left than right…" The laugh didn't come, he wanted so badly to hear Remus laugh while around him, one more time, "I just had a horrible dream…" Should he? "I've really messed things up, Remus, for both of us. And—"

"Sirius—" Nope, he shouldn't.

"I'm sorry." But he said it anyway, he practically breathed the words, whimpered even. He muttered through the darkness, but his mind was screaming the words. He wanted to be forgiven. His body ached for it. His conscious was so sordid and thick with the guilt. He couldn't believe what he had done, and at the same time he knew he was always as low to do something cruel like this. But wasn't sorry supposed to _fix _it? Wasn't Remus supposed to forgive him? They were best friends… _Were_, he told himself as he stared at the cold floorboards.

"Go to sleep, Sirius."

Remus' words had to be colder.

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**TBC?**

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_Moony73_


End file.
